The Hidden Icon (21 page)

Or perhaps their temples were merely for show.

The irony of so many gods represented here, and each of them embodied somewhere in Ambar by a living being, made me wonder what exactly I was expected to do here. Was I meant to worship Theba? I certainly couldn’t believe that she would deign to worship anyone else.

“We keep faith as Aleyn keeps it,” Gannet said, though I didn’t know if his words were in response to my thoughts, or simply in continuing the conversation we had begun earlier. When he continued, he wasn’t speaking of Ambarians. “It isn’t the same for us, of course.”

“You mean I can’t just ask myself for guidance?”

I knew I was being ridiculous, and in front of the gods, no less. But I didn’t care.

Gannet ignored me, striding to the center of the prayer garden and to the left, out of sight. I followed, passing the stone faces of several benevolent idols whose eyes had been all but rubbed away by the wind. If they could see, I didn’t think they would recognize one of their own, caged in wiry flesh and sullied cloth. Part of me was relieved, and the rest sure that it was inevitable that everyone would, in time, know me for what I was.

He had stopped before an altar which had only one bench for worship, so low that one’s nose would meet the stone before their brow. There was no guide on the altar and no offerings, either, only a copper mirror, green with age and reflecting nothing. This altar I’d never seen before, and I knew why. Aleynians didn’t worship monsters.

This was where the penitent came to seek Theba’s favor, if she had such a thing.

Gannet hadn’t knelt in approach, and neither did I. Instead we both stood at a respectful distance, side by side, as though something was represented there, nameless but powerful. But she had a name, and it was mine.

“I wanted you to see it, before you’re tested.”

“Tested?” There was an edge to my voice that hadn’t been there, not before I’d seen the mirror.

“I know who you are, but like any icon, you must be tested.” I was sure his voice had taken the tone he favored when his words were someone else’s, repeated for my benefit but far from convincing.

“If you’re so sure, what’s the point?”

Gannet looked down at me, uncertainty and disappointment plain in his features.

“You more than anyone should understand that many things are done without a reason, even when it seems otherwise,” he answered, looking away, gaze settling again on the copper mirror. He saw something there, more than anything it could reflect even if it had been highly polished. But it wasn’t the same, the things I had done, the things I might still do. I put a hand upon his arm, fingers clutched persistent against his sleeve.

“Haven’t I been tried enough? I’ve done everything that you’ve asked. I can’t do anymore.”

It was a threat I hadn’t intended until it was there upon my lips and then sprung from them, unfolding in the air between us like a hot breath. Gannet looked from the mirror to my face and away, as though he could see my words between us and studied them. Without looking at me again, he took my hand deliberately from its desperate perch, holding the tight fist in one careful hand.

“What if I told you that a people were brought into the world with fists clenched, grew from sucking babes pounding at their mother’s breast to children whose only games were violent ones. When men and women they come to be, no tool can they wield, no tender stroke can they make, for still their hands are balled. There are a few wise folk among them who want to open their fists, but they’re afraid, sure that fingers wound so tightly from the womb can mean only one of two things: that within their fists they hold a great secret in need of protecting, or an evil that must remain forever caged.”

He paused, drawing his thumb over my fingers, running it along the well created between my nails and my palm. The cold, or his touch, shivered me from head to foot.

“I would like to know, do you think it a greater loss to go to their graves with hands clenched, never knowing, or open them and suffer, if that is what they’re meant to do?”

When Gannet looked at me, it was as though I had commanded it, our eyes charged by my power, or his, or both. I didn’t speak, and didn’t need to, answering him when my hand unfurled like a flower, cupped within his larger one. With his other hand he lifted mine, clasping them both together with his hands, a house to warm them. Because we were touching, I knew that he had suspected my answer already. It had once been his. More keenly than any sense of him I had in that moment, however, was the feeling of his skin against mine, the warmth, the cautious pressure of palm and fingertip.

A cough interrupted us, and Gannet dropped my hands with far less ceremony than he had gathered them. One of Rhale’s servants stood a few paces away in the prayer garden.

“A meal has been prepared, and will be served within the hour. Fresh clothes and hot water are ready in your rooms.”

He seemed anxious to be away as soon as his message was delivered, and Gannet advanced upon him, signal enough that he could depart. I remained rooted to the spot, for sense and senses both had fallen to the stone when Gannet released my hands. When he didn’t look back, my voice rose like a bird’s call from my lips, not a threat this time, but an entreaty.

“What did you find, when you opened your fist?” I asked, borrowing from his metaphor, whether it had been intended as one or not. He had taken the test, same as I would have to. Gannet stopped, but he didn’t turn, didn’t look.

“Another closed within it.”

And down the stairs he went, leaving me to wonder if this second fist had been his own, closed still because there were things about himself he couldn’t know, or if it had been mine, all along.

Chapter 17

Rhale was a gracious host, though his temper turned with every course brought out at dinner. It was ludicrous enough to be bathed and dressed and seated at a formal dinner, anyway, after having grown accustomed to taking my meals in my lap. His company was doubly curious. I couldn’t decide if his moods were the product of disposition or age, but when no one commented upon the eccentricities in his manner, I didn’t, either.

I learned much as I sat quietly, eating everything that was put in front of me with a voracity that betrayed our last, lean days. Keeping my mouth full made it rude for anyone to ask me questions, and as there was nothing they could ask me about myself that I’d want to share, my strategy seemed sound. Antares supped with us, but none of his guard, as well as Morainn, Imke, Gannet, Rhale, and two young men I assumed at first were his sons. They had seated themselves on either side of him, and though they didn’t feed him, they came nearly to it, filling his plate, wiping his chin free of dribbled gravy. Their tenderness had nothing in it of the love of sons, and more of love of another kind.

“I was never a campaigning man,” Rhale announced over a dish of greens tossed with nuts, wilted slightly and heavily spiced. The comment seemed directed at no one, nothing preceding it but a polite compliment from Antares regarding the tenderness of the beef. “Though I could have lead one of the Southern expeditions, if I’d wanted to.”

I made a point not to stop my steady consumption, though my attention was far more attuned to the old man than it was to the meal. I needed a distraction after this afternoon, after Gannet. I didn’t look at him now, and had not, but wanted keenly to feel his eyes on me.

“It is a fine thing you did not, Lord Rhale, for we might not have the pleasure of your company now,” Imke offered. I sensed from her a strange desire to please him, as though she were currying favor instead of speaking truth. Rhale huffed, and one of the young men steadied his glass as he nearly toppled it with a blind gesture down the table.

“I may speak ill of the dead as I lost a son to the damned sands, and I’ll tell you that was a headless army if ever there was one. Men like your father,” he said, gesturing to Morainn, who nodded dumb assent, and to Antares after, “and you, well, you’re a breed apart from the rock skulls of my generation. Nobody else has lived as long as me, and why do you think that is?”

No one answered as Rhale dug into a pudding studded with fruit, and I gathered that such questions were not in want of answers. I was, however, and saw in Rhale an eagerness to speak that I hadn’t encountered in anyone else. That he could speak so callously over the death of his own child chilled me, but did nothing to still my tongue.

“Surely your wisdom made you a great councilor in the late war,” I speculated aloud, sorry to have followed Imke into blind flattery but not for what it might win me.

Rhale’s head shot up as he made short work of the pudding. His eyes narrowed on me, little to be read in their milky age.

“What does the conquered have to say about the manner in which they’re beaten? If I’d been consulted we would have had our victory years ago, you wrenched sucking from your mother’s breast and not here a grown woman, with skills and troubles born of that condition and others, besides.”

My heart quickened at how candid he could be where others could not, or would not. Did he know who I was? There was nothing explicit in his words to suggest that he did, but the nearer we drew to Jhosch the less faith I had in Gannet’s insistence that my identity would remain a secret. I sensed that this man, at least, had little concern for keeping secrets.

Charged by his lack of discretion, I lifted my spoon as a bowl of soup was set to cool before me.

“You underestimate us. Had we known you wished to strike at the heart of my family, I think that I would be among them still.”

Rhale laughed heartily at this, and I felt more than one pair of eyes upon me at the table. I had Gannet’s attention, at last, but I didn’t indulge in a glance, focusing instead upon the soup. My feigned disinterest drew the old man out further.

“In the hereafter, maybe. But with
their
kind,” he gestured at Gannet with a chortle and a hiss, “everything must be done as it is written. Blood must be spilled, war must be raged. Death is her trade.”

His words weren’t the senseless ramblings of an old man, but I was sure now that he didn’t know who I was. What role did the dread goddess play in the lives of these people, if he should mention her in such a way? Gannet had insisted I return with them, but he’d never been clear as to why. I took a deep breath before next I spoke, knowing that it would turn the tide of what came next, if not halt it completely.

“But where is it written that she must revel in it?”

No one had any answer for this, not even Gannet. I had looked to him when I spoke and not to Rhale, witnessed his lips parted slightly in anticipation. I wanted him to answer me that it was nowhere, nowhere, when both of us knew and everyone around the table, too, that the answer was everywhere. Even now, how could I reconcile myself to such a monstrous existence? I couldn’t accept even that I had killed a man in my own defense. Would there be more graves for Gannet to dig?

I had a vision, then, of his face ashen, pale with grave sickness or near death, the same parting of lips with the intention to speak but no words issued forth. Hands swam before his face, many pairs and one of them mine. Were those my slim fingers weaving around his neck to strangle him, or clapped over his mouth to stifle his breath? Did I punch out his eyes with pointed fingers? The last pair of hands worked hurriedly among the others, and I saw the mask loose and dip from his brow, startling their terrible work, sparing his life.

When I returned to myself Morainn was speaking, had steered the conversation away from waters that I could disturb, and Gannet was looking at me still, the tight set of his lips like a seam in iron.

What did you see?

How did he know, always, how it was with me? I looked away, and as I summoned the will to deny him entry to my mind, I buried, too, the torturous images, hoping that they were nothing but my imagination.

It was not so late after we concluded our meal that I could retire to sleep, but neither did I want to suffer further the assembled company. One or two at a time I could manage, but I grew tired of the games played, and my part in them. I thought perhaps I could return to the prayer garden, but it was dark now and surely bitter cold. Resigned to my quarters but not to the warmth of the fire within, I was surprised on the stair by Morainn, following after me without servant, or guard, or brother.

“I’ve asked one of Rhale’s men to bring us a cup of punch,” she said, gesturing up the stair. “Shall we?”

I could do little but oblige her, and lead the way up the remaining stair to the landing where Gannet and I had been quartered, his door closed and mine slightly ajar, spilling the fire’s glow onto the stone. Inside, heavy robes that had not been there before were draped across the chairs by the fire, and a little table stood waiting between them for Morainn’s promised punch.

“Lord Rhale is nothing if not hospitable,” Morainn sighed, though her tone teased a little that he was known widely for many other things. Still, we bundled each into the robes provided, and were not seated but a minute before a servant arrived with a steaming flagon and two simple but finely made cups. He poured a healthy sum of the brew for us both, and didn’t wait to be dismissed before going out again. As I raised the cup to my lips, I could smell the spice in it, the strong, sweet scent that promised a sore head in the morning if I drank too fast, or too much.